Rockstar Games' new GTA games are always hyped before release, thanks to Rockstar's traditionally close-mouthed approach to marketing during development, but also because it's been seven years since the last official entry in the Grand Theft Auto franchise.
Rockstar hasn't just been sitting idly since the release of Grand Theft Auto V, of course. It has developed and published the critically-acclaimed title Red Dead Redemption 2 in the meantime, first on consoles and then later on PCs, and the company has also been constantly updating and adding to GTA Online, the incredibly popular multiplayer aspect of GTA V. GTA Online continues to be success for Rockstar, but with the next-generation of video game consoles on the horizon, players are clearly ready for something more.
There have been a ridiculous amount of GTA 6 recently, with many players being tricked into falsely anticipating gameplay reveals or trailers in the months of March, April, and May. The video game community has long had a problem with people pretending to be insiders providing reliable information, but it seems like Grand Theft Auto 6 rumors have attracted more of these types of liars than most.
GTA 6's Fake Leaks Are A Problem
A lot of GTA 6 leaks focus around the next Grand Theft Auto game's location. Many of them suggest the next game will take place in Vice City, Rockstar's fictional version of Miami featured in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories. Simply because both Liberty City and San Andreas have been featured in pixel, early 3D, and next-gen iterations, many players feel confident that Rockstar Games will continue this pattern and set GTA 6 in Vice City. However, there is absolutely no official information which makes this seem likely, other than the random mentions of the city within recent GTA titles.
Because it's been so long since work on the last Grand Theft Auto game stopped (barring GTA Online updates) many players feel like news about GTA 6 could come at any moment. For some people, this becomes an opportunity to post anonymous messages on websites and forums just to see if their own weird hopes and dreams will get picked up by the excited player base. In much the same way that frauds on the internet took advantage of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time fans who were looking for the Triforce on the Nintendo 64, these same tricksters gain enjoyment from making up fake ideas about the next Grand Theft Auto game and ing them off as legitimate "leaked" information.
The biggest problem occurs when some of these alleged leaks and rumors turn out to be true. Sometimes people get lucky with their guesses, and sometimes people actually DO have inside information, but more often than not it's just plain luck when an alleged "leak" gets proven wrong. If Grand Theft Auto 6 really is set in Vice City, many people who were simply saying what they hoped for will point at their former posts and say it was a sign of their insider knowledge, but really it's just that they made inferences based on past information and those inferences ended up being correct. However, it's just as likely that Grand Theft Auto 6 is set in Rockstar's Anywhere City, or somewhere new altogether, and it's important to to always take any unofficial information with a healthy dose of skepticism.
